- Binance has been criticized by the mainstream media thanks to an FCA report
- The report was created in June but only published this week
- It buried the news that Binance UK had complied with all demands outlined in the document
Binance has never been the favorite son of the UK’s financial watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and it seems that its battle with regulators is proving fertile ground for the anti-crypto media. Headlines yesterday screamed that the FCA considered Binance “not capable” of being regulated in the UK after its UK operation, Binance UK, failed to fulfil the criteria needed to gain clearance to launch. However, these rulings are actually from June but were published on the same day that the FCA confirmed that Binance UK has “complied with all aspects of the requirements”, a story that was buried by the old accusations.
Binance UK Prevented From Launching
The FCA censured Binance in June over the fact that it hadn’t achieved the clearance necessary to launch Binanc UK despite saying that it had acquired “an FCA-Regulated Entity” in Binance Markets Limited. As a result it was prevented from launching and a number of demands were made upon it. The details of these demands were withheld from the public.
This led to headlines from mainstream media outlets that Binance was “banned in the UK” when in fact all that had happened was that Binance UK had been prevented from launching. The FCA, as it has noted on many occasions, cannot touch Binance.com.
FCA Says That Binance UK Complied With All Demands
On Wednesday the FCA appended their June story to state that Binance UK had done what had been asked of it:
However, this story got buried by the decision of the FCA to publish on the same day the document containing its investigation into Binance and Binance UK, which included a stiff rebuke of the global Binance operation, which it deemed “not capable of being effectively supervised”, adding that Binance “offers complex and high-risk financial products, which pose a significant risk to consumers”.
The publishing of this document ensured that any positive headlines garnered from the compliance of Binance UK got buried, helpfully allowing the anti-crypto media to focus on these attention-grabbing negatives.
June Publications Date Ignored
The fact that these opinions were put together in June was ignored, despite the assertion from the FCA that Binance UK had complied with all of the demands while Binance itself has since taken steps towards greater global compliance, such as mandating KYC, implementing CipherTrace’s traveler software, and hiring a global money laundering expert.
